


Aspects of the Self

by tisfan



Series: Open Ask Prompts [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Pining, Self-Harm, working on the arm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 10:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10660440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: agenderraskel asked: I see a lot of fics where Bucky messes up his arm in order to spend time with Tony. Can I have one where Tony gets really worried about him, thinking it's a form of self harm, and Bucky is all like "but I just wanted him to touch me what do now"





	Aspects of the Self

Tony scratched at his chin with the end of the screwdriver. “This is a good bit of mess, Freezer Burn. What’d you do, get into an arm-wrestling contest with a blender?”

“Mighta grabbed hold of the tail rotor for that AIM short-range chopper,” Bucky said. That was, technically true, although the damage was a little more self-inflicted than that. Hydra, curse every single one of their heads, did good work and the chopper’s stabilizing blade had pretty much disintegrated as it rattled onto his adamantite-alloy fingers. But at the end of the battle, he’d purposely gotten into a pissing contest with the Wolverine.

On the plus side, Logan had been spotted trying to unbend one of those damn claws because it wasn’t retracting correctly.

And further plus, Bucky was down in the workshop. Tony had one soothing hand on his shoulder and was inspecting the interior workings of his wrist and fingers.

On the bad side, he’d managed to fuck up his thumb but good this time.

“I know the expression from the 40’s is to put your best foot forward,” Tony said, muttering around a mouthful of interior screws, “but really, you need to stop stuffing your hand into every hornet’s nest you come across.”

Bucky scoffed. “An insect’s not likely to bother me.”

“I’ll do you a favor, Red October, and not mention that you said that to Jan, shall I?”

God, Bucky loved this. Tony’s hands were magic. Gentle, almost tender, as he worked. His mouth, that sinful double-curve was a miracle, made for kisses, but also one of the snarkiest, saltiest, most sarcastic thing Bucky’d ever had the pleasure of listening to. Tony was witty, quick, brilliant.

Tony would talk to the arm like it was a beautiful dame, sweet-talk it into working, scold it lovingly when it was broken, encourage the gears and servos when they were grinding together. Treated the arm like some marvel of technology and engineering, instead of a weapon to fear and hate. That wasn’t entirely new; there’d been a couple of Hydra technicians who were impressed with the arm and not out and out terrified of the assets, but usually whoever was supervising didn’t allow for idle chatter. Bucky could only tell those techs because their hands were unusually soft and gentle. They didn’t last long in Hydra. One head replaced by two more, but the two were almost always less than the one; less smart, less soft. Mice and men didn’t survive long in a pit of vipers.

Sitting on a workbench in Tony’s ‘shop; letting Tony tinker inside his arm, feeling the twitch and tease of Tony’s fingers along his nerves played merry havoc with Bucky’s emotions. There were times when Tony put away his tools and shut the maintenance panels and Bucky wanted to cry; there were times when Tony brushed his fingers over Bucky’s wrist and Bucky wanted nothing more than to pull the man into a bruising kiss.

Bucky had decades; fractured and broken, where he felt _nothing_.

This…. The feelings that Tony was drawing out with each turn of his tools, with each small kindness, witty quip… thawing a heart long since frozen and teaching it how to beat again… this was worth the incidental pain and inconvenience of putting himself in harm’s way.

“You know,” Tony said, leaning back and looking at Bucky very seriously, “there’s got to be a better way for you to handle this…”

Bucky blinked. “What?”

“Well, I’m hardly the best person to recommend healthy coping mechanisms. I sometimes think it’s a prerequisite to the super-hero biz, some sort of terrible self-esteem crossed with dangerous levels of Atlas syndrome and an epic guilt complex.”

“What syndrome?”

“Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Tony said, twisting the multitool through his fingers like a stage magician. “Try to keep up.”

“Which’s got what to do with me?”

“Genius level IQ, remember? And while I’m not terribly observant, sometimes,” Tony said, flipping the tool into the air a few times and catching it on the way down, “I know a little something about self-inflicted damage. This wasn’t an accident. Neither were the last four times you’ve been down here. I’ve seen you tryin’ to damage the arm in combat, and when that fails, you resort to more and more extreme self-mutilation.”

Shit. Bucky wondered where this lecture was going; the cost of materials to repair the arm, wasting Tony’s time, or--

“What I can’t figure is if it’s the arm itself that you hate, that it’s part of you, and was originally Hydra tech, in which case I’ll ask you again if you want a complete re-design. It will put you out of commission for a while, and you’ll have to train and adjust to a new system. Or if it’s you, yourself, that’s the victim of your self-destructive tendencies and is this going to move on to you harming parts of yourself that aren’t so easily fixed. I know you’ve got healing factor that’s pretty damned impressive, and for all I know, you could be sharpening that knife of yours on your skin and it heals by morning. If that’s the case --”

“I don’t hate myself,” Bucky protested.

“But you are hurting yourself, on purpose?” Tony looked at him like this wasn’t a question. It wasn’t. Tony knew. _Fuck._

“Yeah,” Bucky admitted. He was going to have to stop; Tony wasn’t going to put up with his childishness any longer. He was like a school kid with a crush on the nurse.

“Do you want me to bring up -- er, design specs for a new arm?”

That caught Bucky’s attention. “You already have them.” Also, not a question.

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, sue me. It’s what I do… and while this arm is a glorious piece of tech and I wish you’d stop abusing it, because that just hurts, it hurts me, Bucky, to see it all mangled up like that. But I can make you better. I have the technology.”

Of course Bucky had seen the _Six Million Dollar Man_ ; Clint had decided it was pretty much crucial to Bucky’s reintroduction to modern science fiction. He grinned. A new arm would mean weeks, at least, in the workshop, under Tony’s care and supervision. But --

Then it would be over, and while Bucky could easily and without anguish, tear up the arm Hydra had given him, he didn’t think he could bring himself to deliberately damage anything Tony made special for him, and what would he do, without these hours in the shop?

“I don’t… I can’t…”

“A new arm wouldn’t solve the problem,” Tony said, matter-of-fact.

“I would… I would love a new arm, if you built it,” Bucky said, hesitating. “But no, it wouldn’t solve this problem.” He made a shapeless, helpless gesture.

“Bucky,” Tony said, infinitely gentle. “I’m going to need to tell Cap about this, if you don’t help me solve it. I can’t let you go into combat with a deathwish.”

“It’s not a deathwish,” Bucky protested. He knew about those. He’d had those before. Wasn’t his last thought before he hit the ground off the train _You can’t hurt me anymore?_ Turned out he’d been wrong about that. But before, during the war, he knew about pain that wasn’t going to end. It squeezed around his heart a little know; pain for what he couldn’t have.

“Look, I’ll talk to Steve about it,” Tony said. “We can find a solution, get you some help. Something --”

“Don’t tell Steve,” Bucky said. He scrambled to his feet. “Look, I know what the problem is, Tony, it’s not… it’s not something that can be fixed.”

“You are _self-harming_ ,” Tony said. “I can’t do nothing. It’s not in me to watch a teammate self-destruct. Let me help you.”

“ _You_ are helping me,” Bucky burst out. “You are. Being down here, with you. That’s helping. I didn’t… didn’t know how else to get your attention. I like it, okay? When you work on the arm, when you touch… I like it. Look, I know I’m bothering you. I’ll go, I’ll stay out of your hair, I’m --”

“Woah, woah, woah, Dostoyevsky,” Tony said. “Hey, no, don’t run away. I-- Come on, Bucky, just talk to me, okay? What is it you need?”

“You, Tony,” Bucky whispered, his voice breaking. “Just you.”

“Huh,” Tony said. “You know, you don’t have to hurt yourself for that, gorgeous.” He took a step closer, stood closer to Bucky than he ever had before. Bucky could feel the heat seeping off the man’s skin, the tickle of his breath. “I’ve been right here, the whole time.”

Bucky opened his mouth to say something, anything, he didn’t even know what. But Tony’s mouth came up to touch his and Bucky decided that there wasn’t anything he needed to say that badly.

He drew a hand around the back of Tony’s neck and pulled him closer.

Yeah, this was definitely better than a multitool and some spare servos.

  
Much better.


End file.
